


Cracked and Broken

by drunkdragon



Category: NieR: Automata (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, F/F, Fix-It of Sorts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-24
Updated: 2017-10-24
Packaged: 2019-01-22 07:32:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,607
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12476508
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/drunkdragon/pseuds/drunkdragon
Summary: YoRHa is gone. And all that’s left are her imperfections, the scars that Command had left behind forever.





	Cracked and Broken

A2’s skin isn’t smooth all around. Not like 2B’s. Certainly not like 9S’. Sand and dust get in, and while it’s all hermetically sealed, age takes its toll. The material that’s meant to fill the gap is deteriorating.

She needs maintenance - a luxury she can’t afford in the end. So she fights. It’s what she was made for, after all. She was supposed to fight and die. It was just by chance that she survived her ‘invasion’ instead.

There’s only emptiness, though. The machines aren’t an objective anymore. She kills these machine lifeforms, but there’s no point in it. All she can do is wander.

A part of her forgives the Commander for what was done, of the deceit. It’s strange. YoRHa was meant to be an operation to give androids hope where there was none. And now that it’s gone, its wretched core torn asunder in space, she should be proud that it no longer exists. Happy, even.

But it’s just empty. No objective. No path in the end. The very thing that the operation sought to provide is now gone with it.

She’s not like 2B. She’s certainly not like 9S. They were made to perfection, and can enjoy their lives together. She is not. She was supposed to die. Happiness was not planned for A2, and she accepts it.

She keeps fighting, slaying whatever remaining stray machines she can find, the one thing she was designed to do.

* * *

A2 sometimes watches them - 2B, 9S, the resistance members - when they go through the city ruins. She has to, in a sense. If they catch wind of her, who knows what would happen.

Her joints ache. If there was such a thing as a god anymore, she would curse them out. But there isn’t, and she just tries to do what she can. Scrounged oils here, a repurposed piece of metal to hold her sword together there. But it’s just a bandaid, whatever those used to look like. These alone won’t be enough.

And one day they find her. It just had to be a particularly bad day, too.

She had been fighting, like always, but this one had given her hell. It must have escaped from the factory or something. This machine was more advanced than it's usual brethren. It went down in the end, and so did she, only enough energy to make it to a wall and collapse by its side. Weak, she called herself. Told herself to get up, to keep moving, to find a place less exposed and maybe get some of that maintenance done. But no such luck. Even as her motors spring to life, invigorated by the sudden onset of footsteps, the light _tap taps_ of those androids, the most she can do is grip her sword and try to push herself up.

But A2 can’t keep a solid footing. An errant cough - her own weak cough - is enough to throw her off balance. Right as 2B and 9S enter her vision, she collapses into an ungraceful heap.

The two of them don’t know what to do. 9S is upset, and she can see it in how he moves back away from her. 2B is more stoic, staring at her predecessor who was once an enemy but became a vessel to her mission, one that she ultimately failed to uphold. A2 had stabbed 9S in the end, after all.

But there’s more after the two androids, and a small group of resistance members pull up behind them. She tries to rise again, and struggles to a kneeling position, still leaning against her sword. They, too, have no idea what to do, deferring their decision to each other until they part for the resistance leader.

Anemone.

For a moment there’s silence. Their gazes meets. A part of A2 is glad to see her again. For all the shit she’s been through, the resistance leader seems to be the only one she can trust at times. The only one who gives a shit about the rest of the androids around them in this god-forsaken-

She blinks, and forces her jaws to move.

“H-Hey.”

It’s scratchy. Sand and wear and tear and overused joints make her voice even more robotic, more metallic than she’s used to. A2 almost doesn’t recognize it.

Anemone turns around. Gives some orders or something. A few of the resistance seem to hesitate, but another bark gets them moving. Firm hands pick her up by beneath her shoulders and she grumbles something incoherent against the momentary pain. She’s still too tired, but eventually she’s turned flat onto something.

A stretcher.

She can feel their stares on her - 2B and 9S. But Anemone doesn't leave her side as they walk the rest of the way back to the resistance camp, and she falls into an uneasy sleep.

* * *

 The first time A2 wakes up, her visual sensors aren’t functioning. But she can hear them. She doesn’t recall her name not because she doesn’t know it, but because she can’t immediately recall which name goes on which twin’s face.

“Oh, she- 9S, put her back under again.”

She tries to resist, but all too soon her motor functions go rigid before falling back into a relaxed state.

Darkness.

The next time she wakes up, she’s in a cot. Blinking the sun out of her eyes, she tries to rise, but a small cloth band is tying one of her hands to the side of it. It’s not a very complicated one knot - they even left the strands facing towards her, as if they knew that it couldn’t stop her from leaving.

But the annoying part is that there are little chimes attached to each one. Chimes that ring and sing and clang and bang with each jostle of her hand.

“Ah, you’re up.”

Her head snaps to the doorway and it’s Anemone.

She knows what the bells are for - to let everyone in a mile radius know that she’s awake - but she humors her anyway. “What’s with the kinky shit?”

“Well, before you head out, I wanted to have a talk with you.” Anemone calmly walks over to another cot and takes a seat.

“Well, tough.” With a quick tearing sound, her arms are free. Tiny bells crash onto the ground and A2 stands up, “Thanks for the help, but I’m out of here.”

The moment she tries to take a step, she falters and warnings begin to flare up from her motor units. She scans through them, the code seamlessly going through her eyes. Her body tips over and if it wasn’t for Anemone she’d of fallen flat on her face.

“That’s what I wanted to talk about, actually.” There’s a heavy sigh, and when she’s brought down onto the cot again, the other android takes a seat next to her. “Your leg parts are busted. Thankfully it wasn’t a virus, but when we tried to work and put them back together, it was too complicated of a fix.”

Anemone must have seen the grimace on her lips since she stopped talking.

A beat.

A2 looks away after she realizes she’s staring into empty space. “They don’t have to do a full fix. Just do enough so I can move and get out of your hair.”

Anemone takes a breath and starts speaking again. “I had a feeling you’d ask for that.” A2 swears, but keeps silent in the end. “Looking at the numbers and supplies, it’s not worth it to just do a patch job - not when the damage is that bad. You’ll just end up here again... or worse.”

Silence. She’s seen what ‘worse’ implies. She knows ‘worse’. Both she and Anemone are more familiar with that word than they’d like.

“And we can afford you a full repair, but looking at the numbers, we might as well build you a new pair and salvage what we can from your old ones.”

A2 tenses. “Don’t.”

“... Don’t what?”

“... Just repair them.”

Anemone doesn’t say anything. But she’s looking at her hard and deep. Right when she can’t take it anymore, though, she stands up, “Alright, then,” and begins to walk away.

* * *

Turns out repairing them was worse. Because she couldn’t move, she was stuck on the cot for longer than she wanted to ever be stuck anywhere.

What was even worse, though, was that Anemone commissioned the other two androids to help locate and obtain the parts. After all, there was no YoRHa to send orders to anymore.

Not like they’d take an order from A2 anyway.

“You know, you’re making this a lot more difficult than it has to be.” Anemone is visiting her again. No other androids have been sent to the ward as of yet. No one else has visited her either besides Anemone.

“Well just tell them to give me back my legs and it’ll all be over with.”

Apparently it wasn’t enough to repair her on the cot. They needed to take her legs off entirely from her chasis. And she has a sneaking suspicion that when she gets them back, it’s not going to be entirely her old legs anymore.

But what else is she to do? The two androids would end her if she did anything funny. And so she just grimaces in her cot all day, analyzing and compressing and filing away data. It’s something she hasn’t done in a long time and needs to catch up on.

Maybe if she had been on top of it, she might have come out of that fight better.

But as she goes through her memories, she sees her old comrades again. Dead and gone, thrown to the side for the purpose of research.

“Thinking about them again?”

A2 didn’t know she could be even angrier than she was before. But it’s not directed at Anemone. “I still can’t believe you’ve let it all slide.”

There’s a heavy and slow sigh. “I remember them just as much as you do, A2.”

“Doesn’t it make you mad?”

“It used to, but not anymore. The difference is that I’ve moved on, I guess.”

She feels more bothered by that statement than she would like to admit, but by the time she tries to say something, Anemone is already saying her goodbyes and walking out the door. She’s got a base to run, after all.

* * *

It takes five days for her the repairs to be completed. And when it’s all done, it’s not quite A2’s legs anymore. The size, shape, and weight are the same. But the way the logic and motors work are different. She could call Anemone out on it, but that doesn’t feel right. From what she could see and feel in the code, it functions a lot better than before. And in the long run, that was more important.

Her logic circuits tell her to say thank you, and that’s how she finds herself in front of Anemone’s quarters in the evening.

“Looking for me?”

A2 whirls around to see Anemone behind her. She scrunches her face a bit and looks away. Tries to say thank you but it's hard.

“The legs you gave me aren't the same.”

Fucking hell, just say thank you, she tells herself.

“I know.” There is no shame in her voice. “I didn't want to find you in a worse condition, so I had the swap done anyway.” she walks to the door and opens it. “Let's continue inside.”

Anemone doesn't say what ‘worse’ meant - they both knew that A2 was lucky to be alive.

“Why did you help me?”

Was it really so hard to just say that she was grateful?

To this the other woman sighs and wearily lays down on the bed in the corner, far away from the desk that was covered in whatever gadgets that YoRHa had set up for her. All junk now. “The easy thing to say is that with the passing of our immediate director, in addition to lacking a direction, us androids are probably of a limited number now.”

“And the hard one?”

For a moment Anemone didn’t stir. There’s a slow rising of her chest, so exposed despite being under whatever layers of clothing she wears. But then she gets up, and before A2 knows it the distance between them approaches zero.

The sensors on her lips momentarily flare to life. A thousand words scream through her mind and she can’t pick out the ones she wants to say.

“Not going to say anything?”

She doesn’t know how to feel. “How can you be like this?” Her eyes shoot up into Anemone’s calm ones. She tries to ignore the rising pulse of her black box, the heat going through her body.

“Have you forgotten what Command has put us through?”

“I haven’t, but like I said, I’ve moved on.”

“Anemone...” she says her name for the first time in a long while. It’s not with anger, though. There’s something she herself can’t even recognize in all this. She tries not to think so hard about it. It's just programming, she told herself. Just an inconvenient piece of code put into her mind by YoRHa.

But she fails, and all that comes out is a low voice. “How?” Her fists clench, pressure gauges showing on the sides of her vision. “I’m a soldier. We’re soldiers. We were made to fight. We’re not programmed to expect happiness, to expect this.”

“Maybe,” Anemone bolds up again, and a smooth hand brushes up against A2’s cheek. “But soldiers experience camaraderie. We’re made to bond, whether that’s with an old group or a new one.”

She has no answer.

“You think you lost everyone, but that’s not quite true. You still have me." A thumb brushes what would be her cheekbone. "Stay with us, A2. Or at least stay with me. It doesn’t have to be all the time, but at least come back to me.”

A hug. Another kiss, soft and undemanding like the first. Heat and warmth envelop her, and soon she’s sitting on her bed and they talk.

She decides to try staying.

* * *

It’s been three days since her decision. Honestly, A2 regrets every moment. She wants to be out there, killing robots, searching for the big ones and taking them down. The little piece of a camp she is given is the one closest to the main exit. It’s as if Anemone knows she wants to go.

She didn’t have to stay all the time. Anemone told her that, and is setting up plans to allow her easy travel in and out of the base. But when she lays down on whatever soft thing her bed is made of, her gears just want to enter rest mode. It’s quiet. It’s relaxing.

No one really visits her, and she’s okay with that. 9S came by to run a diagnostic scan (under the strict supervision of 2B) to make sure everything is okay. As soon as she checked out on all of the tests, the two were gone.

What she finds herself looking towards are when Anemone stops by. She brings small supplies to help keep her room stocked with repair salves and a few other chips she can utilize - the good ones. She’s never there for long, but A2 doesn’t mind.

It’s nice having a place to return to, a place for her cracked and broken self to call home. And slowly the chatter of the sounds of the resistance camp start to blend in with the ones from so long ago.

It’s not perfect. Perfect would have been YoRHa Command deciding differently that day. But it’s better than before.


End file.
